Barbara Starr (CNN) reports, "A U.S. Marine stationed at Firebase Bell was killed
by an ISIS Katyusha rocket attack on Saturday. Eight U.S. troops were
also wounded in the attack. Three were medivaced to Germany where one is
described as having serious injuries a defense official told CNN."

Why?

Why did they die?

Why did US President Barack Obama send them and others into Iraq?

To help Iraq?

He said, before he sent US troops in, that the only answer for Iraq was a political solution.

But there has been no political solution.

More to the point, there is no legitimate government.

Yes, Barack forced Nouri al-Maliki to step down as prime minister before the end of his term.

Yes, Barack backed Haider al-Abadi to be the new prime minister.

But we're not talking about that.

Iraq has no legitimate government.

This is from Iraq's Constitution:

Article 54:
First: The electoral term of the Council of Representatives shall be
limited to four calendar years, starting with its first session and
ending with the conclusion of the fourth year.

Second: The new Council of Representatives shall be elected forty-five
days before the conclusion of the previous electoral term.

Do you get it?

Because the White House really, really hopes you don't.

Nouri's term should have ended in November of 2014.

Since Haider replaced Nouri, Haider's term should have ended in November of 2014.

Haider is no longer a member of Parliament.

There are legally no members of Parliament* because their four year term expired in November of 2014.

[*We can argue this all you want but when Tareq al-Hashemi was Vice
President from 2005 to 2010 and before he (and anyone else) was named to
the posts following the 2010 elections, he was visiting other countries
to promote investment and business in Iraq and Nouri objected and
insisted that Tareq was not a vice president because his term had
expired. Nouri's understanding/view was not disputed by the press, they
treated it as gospel. So if that was the case then, it's the case
now.]

The current Parliament held their first official session November 11,
2010. So if we're generous, we can argue their term expired in November
11, 2014.

It's March 29, 2016.

There is no legitimate government in Iraq nor any legal one.

Where are the elections?

Per the Constitution, they should have taken place over a year ago.

Where are the elections?

And how can Barack justify sending US troops into the failed state of Iraq when it doesn't even have a government?

At the very least, he should have made any troops being sent in, any aid
-- weapons or dollars conditional upon free and fair elections.

Iraq is a failed state.

The US troops are in Iraq to prop up the illegitimate government of Iraq.

In what world is this acceptable?

In the United States, elections are not postponed.

9/11 did not result in a loss of elections nor, for that matter, did the American Civil War.

In 2014, at the outset of the latest US Iraq war, known as
“Operation Inherent Resolve,” the Obama administration vowed that the US
intervention would be limited to air strikes and a minimal ground role,
restricted to small numbers of “advisors” embedded with Iraqi units.During
the nearly two years of escalating US operations that followed, these
promises have been continuously rolled back. A familiar pattern has
emerged, whereby the US military chiefs periodically announce, without
any suggestion that the civilian administration has been consulted or
even informed, their plans for an imminent expansion of the quality and
role of US forces in the war.Last June, the Pentagon unveiled
plans for the indefinite stationing of US ground forces throughout Iraq
in a network of “lily pad” bases. In December, Secretary Carter
announced the deployment of a Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)
“expeditionary targeting force,” essentially a small army of lavishly
funded and equipped commando units specializing in assassination,
kidnapping, and other black operations.The US moves toward larger
ground operations have proceeded beneath a relentless bombing campaign.
US-led coalition planes have pummeled Iraq with more than 7,336 strikes
since the beginning of the air war in August 2014.The American
military violence being inflicted upon Iraq in the name of fighting the
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is part of a decades-long assault
on the country.

And the pummeling of Iraq continued today with the US Defense Dept announcing/claiming/boasting:

Strikes in Iraq

Attack aircraft conducted four strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:-- Near Hit, two strikes struck an ISIL bed-down location and an ISIL safe house.-- Near Sinjar, a strike destroyed two ISIL assembly areas and suppressed an ISIL machine gun position.-- Near Sultan Abdallah, a strike destroyed three ISIL assembly areas.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic
events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a
single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a
single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle
is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons
against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for
example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or
impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not
report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number
of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual
munition impact points against a target.

The armed group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has claimed
responsibility for a suicide bombing in central Baghdad that police said
killed seven people and wounded 27.The blast occurred on Tuesday near a gathering of workers in Tayaran
Square, about a kilometre from a sit-in held by supporters of
influential Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to demand political reforms.

Meanwhile, Moqtada's rally behind Haider position appears to be wavering: